By Scott Gilfoid: Tyson Fury has accepted last night’s fight offer made by IBF/WBA heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua following his “life and death dance” with Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley Stadium in London, England. Joshua called out Fury while inside the ring after beating the 41-year-old Wladimir by an 11th round knockout. What was troubleing though is the fact that Joshua called out Fury despite having a rematch clause with Klitschko. So in other words, for a fight between Joshua and Fury to take place, Wladimir would have to choose to not execute his rematch clause in his contract.
Wladimir said last night that HE WILL be excuting his rematch clause for the Joshua rematch. What this means for Joshua and Fury is that they’re going to need to wait until Wladimir gets a second crack at Joshua. That’s not good news for Joshua, his promoter and for Fury, because Wladimir could very well win the rematch. He knows what he did wrong last night, and he’ll be sure to go for a quick knockout in the next fight. Wladimir isn’t going to let Joshua hang around and get his second wind.
Wellldone @anthonyfjoshua good fight, you had life & death with @klitschko & I played with the guy, let's dance 💃 pic.twitter.com/alLRHPb513
— TYSON2FASTFURY (@Tyson_Fury) April 29, 2017
So there it is. Fury accepts Joshua’s fight offer. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn better scurry in thee opposite direction if he doesn’t want his golden goose plucked clean by Fury.
Fury has been flapping his gums something awful for the last few months on his Twitter account, and it’s been sort of neat to read some of his comments aimed at Joshua. I don’t think the boxing public took Fury seriously as being capable of beating Joshua. But after last night, I think the perceptions have changed. Fury looks more than good enough to hand Joshua his first defeat. I think Fury beats Joshua 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I think Fury beats Joshua even easier than he did Dereck Chisora.
Joshua doesn’t have the engine to beat someone like Fury, and it would be a massacre. I would favor Fury to beat Joshua if they were to fight next, but they’re not. It’s not worth talking about. Fury is going to have to cool his heels while he waits for Joshua and Wladimir to fight next. But if you want to talk about who wins a hypothetical fight between Joshua and Fury fight right now, I say Fury with ease beats the brakes off of Joshua. It wouldn’t be a fight. Fury is too big for Joshua and his stamina is way too good in my view.
Joshua is a slow fighter that has put on way too much muscle. I don’t know who’s making the decisions in Joshua’s training camps when it comes to the exercises he does, but someone needs to get him to back off all this weight training he’s doing and get him to lose at least 30 lbs. of muscle. Joshua was SO MUCH better back in 2009 when he weighed only 220.
It’s sad to look back at those old videos of Joshua and see how good the guy was back then. He ruined his physique with weight training in the last 4 years in my opinion. I can understand Joshua wanting to have a hobby, but when your hobby [weight lifting/bodybuilding] gets in the way of your job, you’ve got to back off and do the smart thing. Joshua needs to stop lifting weights entirely and trim the muscle down in a dramatic way before it’s too late. It will be too late if Joshua continues to weigh 250 and fights Wladimir in a rematch.
Here’s what Joshua said last Saturday night in calling out Tyson Fury inside the ring after his win over Wladimir:
“(Tyson) Fury where you at, baby? I love fighting. Tyson Fury, I know he’s been talking, I want to give 90,000 a chance (to see us), I just want to fight.”
Fury and Joshua can face each other one of these days after Wladimir fights Joshua in the rematch. It will also have to wait until Fury loses the weight that he’s put on since 2015, and until he gets cleared to fight again. Fury has some major hurdles to jump over before he can box again. I have no doubts that the 29-year-old Fury will return to the ring in the future, but we’re probably talking about 2018 at the very earliest.
I definitely not see Fury coming back this year to fight. The thing is, Joshua is so flawed that Fury will likely beat him no matter how much time goes by before they face each other. I think Wladimir’s promoter Vitali Klitschko could beat Joshua if he went through a training camp and took the fight. Vitali is 45-years-old right now, but I think he’s so much more skilled than Joshua. I don’t think it would be a fight. Vitali would spear Joshua and destroy him quickly.
It wouldn’t take long. As soon as Joshua gasses out, Vitali would finish him off, because he would be smart enough to realize that he couldn’t just let Joshua hang around until he got his second wind the way Wladimir did last night. I’m still shaking my head wondering what on earth made Wladimir think he could let Joshua survive after knocking him down in the 6th round. That has got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen Wladimir do before. But as I was saying, Vitali AND Fury wipe the deck with Joshua in my opinion.
You can also throw Joe Joyce’s name in the mix. I think he would knock Joshua out in his first fight as a pro. Joyce still hasn’t fought his first fight as a pro after taking a silver medal in the 2016 Olympics for Britain. I think Joyce is good enough to beat Joshua in his first fight, I really do. I see that as a mismatch, as Joyce has a good engine and he literally forces his opponents to slug with him for three minutes of every round. There are no rest breaks with Joyce. He just punching and punching without stop and he doesn’t get tired. That guy is going to be a nightmare for Joshua IF Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn ever lets him fight him. I can’t see that fight happening anytime soon if ever.
We still haven’t seen Hearn put Joshua in with Deontay Wilder and Luis Ortiz. After seeing last night’s performance by Joshua, I can definitely see why Hearn hasn’t made those fights. Joshua is too flawed to put in with Wilder and Ortiz. Even David Haye hasn’t been given a fight against Joshua. You wonder why? I think we saw last night why Hearn hasn’t made the Joshua-Haye fight. Hearn has been building Joshua’s ring record with showcase fights against over-matched fodder. I guess he thought it was OK to put Joshua in with Wladimir because he was old at 41, ring rusty from 18 months of inactivity and coming off of an embarrassing loss to Fury. Wladimir showed that even with him being a pretty much over-the-hill fighter, he was still more than good enough to school Joshua.
“We said we were going to see the best of the last Wlad and that’s exactly what we got,” said former super middleweight champion Carl Froch to skysports.com. ”If you’re as old as he is, you want to go out on your shield and that is what he did and showed us how to do it. A younger Klitschko would’ve got Joshua out of there, but that’s why they took it and it paid off. He can go out on that shield and I hope he does.”
Froch hopes that Wladimir retires off of this loss, as does Deontay Wilder. I totally disagree with both of them. Why should Wladimir retire when he could have won the fight? If anyone should retire, it should be Joshua, because he’s the one that got exposed last night, and he’s the one that will likely be seeing his career go belly up soon once he faces Fury, Wladimir, Deontay, Joseph Parker, Joe Joyce, Haye or even Tony Bellew. I honestly would give Bellew a chance to beat Joshua right now.
